Cuban Friendship Urn

It is located on Ohio Drive, Southwest, Washington, D.C., in West Potomac Park (next to the boundary of East Potomac Park), south of the Tidal Basin near the north end of the 14th Street Bridge. Decorations on the tall urn include an eagle with its wings outstretched and human figures depicted in a neoclassical style. It once stood atop a column of marble in Havana, to commemorate the U.S. sailors and Marines who lost their lives aboard the USS Maine when it sank in Havana harbor in 1898, and the friendship and bonds between Cuba and the United States. A Spanish inscription on the urn reads: And in English translation: The memory of the Maine will last forever through the centuries as will the bonds of friendship between the homeland of Cuba and the homeland of the United States of North America. —Gerardo Machado An inscription on the base reads: And in English translation: This urn was sculpted from a fragment of the marble column of the Monument to the Victims of the Maine. Erected in the City of Havana, this column was taken down by the hurricane of October 20, 1926. ==History==

A hurricane in October 1926 knocked the marble column over where it stood in Cuba, and in 1928 the urn was sent by Cuban President Gerardo Machado to the United States and presented to President Calvin Coolidge. Some reports say the urn stood for many years outside the Cuban Embassy on 16th Street, N.W., in Washington. After relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated following Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba in 1959, it disappeared from public view. In 1963, it was said to be in storage. A 2009 National Park Service publication states that it was discovered in a National Park Service warehouse in 1992 and moved to its present site. The newspaper later reported that the urn was placed in East Potomac Park in 1998 following repair work that cost $11,000. In 2007, the urn was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. ==See also==